# Improving admin invites
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727
**Category:** Announcements
**Tags:** invites
**Created:** [July 16, 2026, 10:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727 "2026-07-16T22:11:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@keegan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/keegan)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2026, 10:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/1 "2026-07-16T22:11:28Z")
We’ve redesigned the invite flow so you can invite someone as an admin in a single step, alongside a clearer experience for inviting members. It’s available today as the **“Enable invite modal with roles”** upcoming change.
## 🔬 What changes when the flag is on
The invite modal is redesigned with a **Members / Admins** toggle:
- **Invite members** :
Choose how to invite: a **shareable link** (optionally restricted to an email domain) or an **email invitation** sent to a specific address. Secondary options (max uses, description, expiry, arrive at topic, add to groups) are tucked behind a gear button to keep the default form short.
- **Invite admins** :
Enter an email address and click **Create & send**. Admin invites are always single-use and restricted to that address. When the invitee accepts:
- After creating an invite you’ll see a summary of what was configured, with the link ready to copy or share. The invite type can’t be changed after creation.
- The **admin onboarding panel** ’s “Invite collaborators” step now opens this flow with the Admins tab preselected.
### Before
### After
## ⚙ Turning on the new invite flow in your community
Navigate to the **Upcoming changes** page in your admin area (`/admin/config/upcoming-changes`). Locate the **“Enable invite modal with roles”** item and update the **“Enabled for…”** field to opt your community into the new experience. You can opt back out from the same page at any time.
## 📣 What do you think?
Over to you: we’d love to hear what you think of this update. What do you like and dislike; what is working well, and what could be improved?
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### Author:  [@ondrej](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ondrej)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 9:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/7 "2026-07-17T09:13:40Z")
Why would you only want to invite an admin and not a moderator? To me the description is confusing _“The invitee becomes a moderator on signup and an admin once the inviter confirms the email”_ so does that mean if you don’t approve their email they will just be a moderator, maybe I’m reading this wrong but you need an activated email to do stuff?
Why not have something like this I mocked up?
* * *
> [@keegan](#):
>
> - they become a **moderator** right away, so they can start helping immediately
Just to clarify that to me its not clear that they become moderators as its called ‘invite admins’ and the tab says ‘Admin’. All I’m suggesting is to make it easier to invite and admin or a moderator.
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 10:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/8 "2026-07-17T10:07:53Z")
Because bypassing the promote-to-admin confirmation mail would be a security risk.
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### Author:  [@ondrej](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ondrej)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 10:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/9 "2026-07-17T10:10:39Z")
Yeah I understand that but I was mainly wondering why you would only want to easily invite another admin instead of offering an option to invite a new moderator too.
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### Author:  [@rishabh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rishabh)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 12:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/10 "2026-07-17T12:10:33Z")
That’s a good question. We initially designed this flow so that it can be plugged into early site onboarding stages when it’s appropriate to invite another admin to help with site setup and configuration. To make this admin invitation experience more convenient and predictable for both parties, we decided to extend this to grant moderator status automatically. So the email flow is a side-effect of that decision.
Thank you for the mockup! The suggestion to make it easier to invite a moderator using the same UI is good, and we might look into that once we shift more focus from the initial admin experience.
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### Author:  [@ondrej](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ondrej)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 12:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/11 "2026-07-17T12:18:11Z")
> [@rishabh](#):
>
> designed this flow so that it can be plugged into early site onboarding stages
Ahh okay thanks for the explanation, I was just missing context then. I mean that does make sense to me now 😁
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 1:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/12 "2026-07-17T13:25:25Z")
I like this version a lot because it covers both cases, and a lot of the time a moderator might be the better option because they can still be helpful without gaining full access to destructive actions (and thus it doesn’t require an additional confirmation, so it’s a simpler process).
There might also be an opportunity for education here, with a simple ❓ link that explains the difference in privileges between the two. Every time an admin can reach the conclusion of “oh actually a moderator is enough” we end up with slightly more secure sites.
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### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/13 "2026-07-17T13:56:27Z")
> [@awesomerobot](#):
>
> There might also be an opportunity for education here, with a simple ❓ link that explains the difference in privileges between the two.
Yes, I think this would be a good place to do that.
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### Author:  [@rishabh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rishabh)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2026, 11:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-admin-invites/407727/14 "2026-08-19T11:25:33Z")
We made a couple more improvements in this area:
- [DEV: Allow links to be generated for admin invites - Pull Request #42557 - discourse/discourse - GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/42557)
- [UX: Add copy link button to /invites list ellipsis menu - Pull Request #42652 - discourse/discourse - GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/42652)